ShaunR

FWIW???? The Vista x32 installation I tried above was on a Acer Core Duo Laptop. It's probably got more to do with multiple installations. I always have problems with activation since I have to do them manually and (for me) its not worth the aggro having multiple installations.

I think you are still confusing Bi-directional with Full Duplex. Take for example the Micro-Epsilon Micrometers and 2D/3D Profilers (just an example, since I used them recently). They can operate by "streaming" data back to the Master (important for high speed acquisition). If this were to be used in a half-duplex manner, then once switched into this mode, you would not be able to control the device since the device is continuously transmitting. However, with full duplex you can. In another scenario, we have 1MBPs full duplex RS485 digital IO boards. The protocol is a command-response type which is appropriate for half-duplex operation since the devices don't start to transmit until a full message has been received. However, since we have upto 10 of these on a bus, most of the time, the RX line is saturated with messages. We can decide to ignore RX messages if they are a bit stale (since the devices must use hold-off and wait untill the line becomes free due to another device transmitting). But we cannot allow the device not to operate on commands immediately via the TX line. Devices such as these are quite common. And "True" full duplex devices actually start constructing the response on the RX line before the entire TX message has been received.

Don't know how MAX does it, but all the NI product versions are available in the regsitry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\National Instruments\XXX\CurrentVersion where XXX is the package.

Well. Your drive also seems resistant to WMI as well The pervious DLL used 3 methods, the final one being querying the WMI database. Hmmm. Digging deeper........

Whats wrong with the "Write To Spreadsheet File" in the file functions palette? Simple 2D array where the first row is the header.

Try using the "To Variant" function then comparing.

I've just installed LV2009 on Vista Ultimate x32 to see if I get the same problems. I didn't and it is working fine. Are you sure you are installing the 32 bit version of LV 2009 and not the 64 bit version? I didn't try the x64 to see if the installer complains.

Indeed. Actually, it is worse than that. The restriction isn't so much Admin rights, its the "Integrity Level". For example, the elegant way of reading the bios is to use ZwOpenSection or NTOpenSection. However, those functions have an "IL" of High and Admin is only granted "Medium". Its all got very complicated in Vista. But not to be daunted, and since you seem to have one of these problematic drives can you try this one?

The GetDocument only checks whether the type in the header is text or not. If it is text, it saves it as an ascii file. If it isn't, it saves it as a binary file. If you don't wire a path to the file terminal, it will not save anything (and won't prompt you for a filename).

60uv is not much to play with and I'm afraid no amount of processing or filtering is going to help you. You have to try and identifiy where the different components of the noise are being injected (sensor wires make good arials, but a succeptable amplifier won't help either) The only thing you can do is try to reduce the noise and many medical systems utilise the following. 1. Shielded sensor wires. 2, Short sensor wires. Make them as short as possible by placing the amplifier as close to the sensor heads as possible. 3. Battery supply. This not only allows 2, but also means that your supply wires don't pick up noise. 4. Put the amplifier in a sheilded box.

Not quite what I was after. I want to be able to register and use an Event structure I played around with an active X dll that enabled me to register for events using the register callback node which was rather successful, but as I don't allow active X....I binned it . I was hoping to see the events overhauled with LV2009, but severely disapointed when it was only cosmetics. On topic. Looking at BIOS now. Seems to work on most things except RAID. Any pitfalls?

Try using a "Waveform chart" and fix the history length to 50,000. This will automagically append the latest datapoint and drop the first (fixed array size) and you don't have to use the array build functions. You might get away with this if you say its fine up to 5 seconds.

Hmmm. I thought that was only for build. Does that mean its the project's dependency path thats causing Daklus problems, rather than the vi's?

Not at all. Just replace the word "code" with " an object" in your sentence and thats pretty much OOP.

One thing thats been bugging me all day. You say your having problems with .NET. But .NET assemblies are registered (in much the same way as ActiveX). So in theory, no application (including LV) actually knows where the files are physically located, only if a certain function has been registered. What am I missing here?

The USB detect I have uses message notification for removal andinsertion (oh what I'd give to tap into windows messages fromLabview:P) . It just walks the registry to find out what was removed or inserted from the device ID returned. Good to know that that's not foolproof either.

LOL. Bi-directional isn't the same as full duplex. In RS485, you cannot have 2 devices driving the line at the same time, i.e in contention. (In full duplex you can TX and RX simultaneously since you have 2 pairs of wires). If 2 drivers try to drive at the same time (e.g a master is transmitting whilst the slave isresponding) the electrons get confused and you will get rubbish on the bus.

Don't think this would work. Electrons get confused when they meet each other on the other side of the pavement.

Ahh. I have a rule with our programmers. No .NET and No ActiveX. If a "Texty" wants a feature from one of those technologies, he can get off is arse and write it, and while he's at it, make it really easy for use in LV (i.e no obnoxious referencing). You'd be surprised at how often they come up with a far more elegant solution Your options are limited. Unfortunately, the modification bitset is read-only-no help there! You could walk the project list using a vi installed in the environment that re-compiles any vi's when a project is loaded,, but I expect your SC would still complain that the file has changed. The only viable way forward that I can see is to enforce a directory structure so that they can't put the files anywhere and can only check them out to a single "working area" which is the same on all machines. We do this anyway as it means anyone can go to a machines and not spend 10hrs hunting for files.

Not much

Thats a joke....right?

I haven't seen a property node for getting this. The only problem is that I've had the ID change several times due to adding cards or because LV thinks its about time to annoy me. Besides. This disk serial thing is getting personal between me and Microsoft. Damned if I'm going to be beaten by it!

We define a relative path inside the vi that calls the dll (using "specify path on diagram"). So it doesn't matter where the dll lives as long as it lives in the same relative position. It means you can move it anywhere and LV won't go searching or re-compiling. The added plus is that (with LV2009 x64) we can also switch DLLs between x32 and x64 depending on which environment it was deveoped/compiled in.

The two drives tested are SATA. So maybe what you are seeing is peculiar to XP. I'll take one of the laptops from work home and see what happens. I wasn't particularly looking at USB drives since they can be moved from PC to PC, but in my wanderings I did notice they don't give a serial (serialoffset=0). It is looking like the only reiable way is to walk the registry and look at the device ID (was hoping to avoid that since to me it seems tacky), but if I do go that route, at least it will also get the USB drives (I already have a detect USB drive insertion that works of 7,vista and XP that uses that method).

Always the heathen . SCRIPTING! Since your only putting aside 1 week, you'll have loads of scripting goodies at the end instead of just a headache.